In the past decade our cooperative has invested $170 million in capital expansion. We are, except for one small capital lease, debt-free. This has been funded by our members and our members only.
Not only are we a good cooperative, but we are also a good employer. We have been in the top 100 employers in 2010-11 and the top employer for employees over 50 in 2011. In the GTA, from 2009-2011, we received excellence in governance awards. We were nominated for a grand prix for product innovators three years running, and we also won a Global Co-operator Award. Our values and principles are very important to us.
We are governed by the Co-operative Corporations Act. Like many other cooperatives, we have a full slate of farmer-member directors. We have a governance model that certainly is one member, one vote. Over the last five years we've invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in being able to develop training in governance models and leadership training, not only for our own cooperative, which has won awards in the cooperatives sector, but also we offer that through the other agricultural cooperatives.
One of the important elements of being in a cooperative is ensuring it's a good business, but also being able to understand how to have good governance and making sure you relate to your membership.
Gay Lea Foods puts 40% of its profits back to its members, so it goes back to our farmers. It goes back to be reinvested in capital goods, whether it's tractors or farms, or to ensure there's economic rural sustainability. It's very important for us in order to support the rural community.
Why do farmers belong to a dairy cooperative? Certainly it's the ability to own part of the processing sector. It's being able to have influence as a collective group, and also being able to share in the profitabilities of a vertically integrated industry. Also, one cannot own the industry, but 1,200 can own part of the industry. Just to put it into perspective, our members have $80 million invested in a cooperative that has about $230 million of assets.
Cooperatives certainly are an element for change. If you look at what's happening with the challenges happening to global trade, certainly the supply management industry is under pressure from a global perspective. I'm not going to take all the time to talk about how a strong cooperative is a very strong, viable alternative to supply management, but if you look at three countries in particular.... New Zealand has always being touted as the goal and the model for change. New Zealand has a very strong national cooperative, supported by the federal government and legislation in order to make sure it is a viable entity. If you look also both in Denmark and Holland, the cooperatives are supported very strongly through legislation in order to ensure there's a viable dairy industry.
In countries where there is not strong legislation for the co-op movement—if you look at Australia, Germany, and Great Britain—the economics of dairy within those three countries are of farmers going bankrupt, lower milk costs, and higher costs of production. Britain, for example, has become a net dairy importer when it was a net dairy exporter.
The cooperative model does provide an alternative to differing economic trade models that have been suggested.
The greatest loser through all these changes that have taken place economically certainly has been the farmer. Why does the dairy sector need a cooperative? Certainly it is about being able to sustain itself. It's also being able to ensure it has economic resilience. Gay Lea and someone like Agropur have been a demonstration of that.
In the cooperative sector we don't ask for special treatment, just equality of opportunity. We ask not for favours but for fairness, and we look not for unqualified support but for qualified investment.
The cooperative sector needs the following, according to Gay Lea's perspective. We need recognition that the cooperative sector is a viable economic and social alternative. We need the same access to the same level of economic, legislative, and business support. We have to be able to recognize the role the cooperatives already play within society. We have to understand that the governance model and its values are critically important and that transparency is an important component, and there is a difference in being able to have that as a model.
We have the saying “the 98% rule”, which is that 98% of the information in the cooperatives should be shared. My salary and my bonus are transparent to my members, because they own the cooperative.
Also, there has to be a recognition that the cooperative sector is not only an economic model for domestic growth but also an economic model for international aid. I've spent a great deal of time overseas through Gay Lea's support of international development. I have walked the streets of Kathmandu, and I have seen the good intentions of many nations built into buildings that are closed; they are closed because they are not sustainable. What I see happening in third world countries and developing nations is that cooperatives go in and they create an infrastructure for sustainable economic development and they last. They don't last three years. They don't last 10 years. They last for a lifetime.
We built a school in Nepal for 300 children. Today it has 1,200 children. We built three classrooms. The community built another 12, a computer lab, a science lab, a well, and indoor washrooms. It's through the common goal of an economic model, the cooperative model, that makes this happen.
But not only does it occur in the international field, it also occurs in the rural field as well. Gay Lea Foods gives probably about $350,000 to the development of cooperatives within Canada. We have been able to help support things like the development of local grocery stores where the only grocery store is being closed and the large retail organizations are not supporting the local grocery store. We have made donations and given governance support through the Ontario Co-operative Association in order to make sure that where a community has no grocery store for 80 kilometres, that community is self-sustained.
The cooperative model is a very important thing. Gay Lea is a model of how that works. We have been able to build our cooperative. We have been able to triple our sales. We have been able to quintuple our profitability, not based upon an economic handout but because of a model that works and is sustainable through our community.
Thank you.